I'm needing some more help with making some NPCs for an upcoming game. I'm looking at making a butler/advisor around level 7/8 which is more than one level above the printed advisor in the GMG. The GMG recommends that I just create a new NPC using the monster creation rules which is mostly fine until I get to the damage charts. I expect this butler/advisor to have had a little experience with combat as they are around 300+ years old but the listed advisor has damage stats around 4 levels lower than their actual level. Did I miss something in the NPC section that handles what they expected damage should be? Thanks for any assistance.
What you've missed, if anything, is that NPCs don't have to have stats appropriate to the same level for all purposes. You can create an NPC baker's skill modifiers as a level 10 NPC, for your bake-off challenge sidequest, but still have them be a level 1 (or less!) combatant, if combat somehow happens with them. (The GMG advisor having other combat modifiers appropriate to level 5, and extremely low damage isn't anything a rule will say to do. They may have been trying to get that classic "wizard who is utterly helpless in melee" feeling.)
You can make the divide between combat and noncombat abilities however large you feel is appropriate to the character you're creating.
Taking a look at some of the GMG NPC codex entries, plenty of them have extremely low Strike damage. The level 7 hunter, for example, has got 1d8+8 from their composite longbow, looking a lot like someone took Moderate damage for the level, and then removed a damage die, so that the dice would match it not being a Striking bow. Some other NPCs also look like that was done, whether it particularly makes sense or not (the rapier on the Assassin, for example, does not).